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I like how this page turned out. So now we’re gonna have some good ol’ Matrix/Ken time! Look forward to it, why not.

Let’s talk about anime! I’ve been watching Rage of Bahamut: Genesis. Fun show, love the character designs! It’s the same guy who designed Samurai Champloo, one of my fav anime. Also, Bahamut has some pretty darn great animation. The story?? Well, it’s ok, it’s FINE. The characters are funny and energetic and I definitely get a bit of Slayers nostalgia, although maybe with more melodrama and a little less slapstick. What I love about the show, and this seems to be a general trend in anime, is how it’s a a 12 episode long series. That means they keep the plot moving with kinetic energy! Another anime I saw recently that I liked quite a bit (despite a number of less likable anime cliches) was Beyond the Boundary. It had a really palpable otherworldly atmosphere, beautiful animation, and built to an emotionally impacting if not totally logical ending.

For a long time I pretty much stopped watching anime altogether because I got fed up with a lot of the shounen shows I used to watch. They were just drawn out to a disgusting degree! Even 26 episode long series often felt padded in the middle. This new breed of anime, half season long shows with tightly paced story telling and great animation, feels so refreshing, and it’s getting me back into anime again! Gods know Sword Art Online would’ve benefited enormously if it’d just stopped at episode 15, AMIRITE?? (See, because the second half of that show has got to be the most egregiously offensive ‘hero saves the captive princess’ plotline I’ve watched in recent memory.)

I may check out Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (what a mouthful!) after I’m done with Bahamut. I don’t really know anything about the Fate/Stay Night franchise other than it’s got a lot of fighting, and this most recent incarnation is like a retelling/reimagining of the original story canon. It also looks to have a lot of swords, so I’m ON BOARD.

supper has always been a confusing concept to me. It’s like second lunch? Like a brunch except between lunch and dinner? I mean how many people have breakfast, brunch, lunch, supper, and dinner? WHO ARE THEY, HOBBITS??

Dinner has to do with when the main large meal of the day, no matter the time, so it can be either at lunch time or supper time depending on the family. Most people do not have all three meals unless they are hobbits, having a combination of either lunch/dinner or dinner/supper. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/22446/lunch-vs-dinner-vs-supper-times-and-meanings has a really good explanation. You have to be careful which terminology you use when visiting people in different areas, since if you tell them you will be there by dinner time, they might think it is the opposite one time to the one that you were thinking. That doesn’t even bring up tea.

IDPounder

Vould you lahk sometink to drink? …sometink to…smoke?

Sam DunKley

…Ed, is that you? Look just because you’re making better Justin Timberlake songs than the man himself lately doesn’t mean you can advertise “Sing” in webcomic comments. That’s just “Tacky.”

IDPounder

How DARE you question my artistic integrity! I now curse you to have this song stuck in your head for the rest of the week!

I never comment because I never have anything witty to contribute, but if you’re getting back into anime then I wouldn’t want you to ruin it for yourself right off the bat. Don’t pick up F/SN: UBW. It’s an adaptation of the second of three routes of a visual novel and does not function well as a standalone work due to depending on knowledge and building off of characterization from the route that precedes it as well as the prequel Fate/Zero (which was released after F/SN like with the Star Wars prequels except good). You’d be better off just watching Fate/Zero, though ideally you would read the F/SN VN, then read the F/Z LN and then move onto the F/Z and UBW anime adaptations because 1) huge plot points in F/SN are spoiled by F/Z and 2) even though Ufotable does fantastic adaptations, they can’t help but cut content in order to fit the story into 2 cours. Speaking of which, a single cour (12-13 episodes) is what you call a season of anime and is actually the norm. A multiple cour show runs across successive seasons unless it has a break as is the case with both F/Z and F/SN in which case it is a split-cour series.

Sorry if this is long-winded or preachy, obviously you have the right to watch whatever you want, but as a denizen of /a/, I see a lot of people who are getting into the franchise with the UBW adaptation complain about not understanding anything that’s going on or wondering about the protagonist’s motivation (a large amount of his characterization is skipped due to it taking place in internal monologues in the VN) and I’d rather not see you get frustrated when you could be enjoying something else instead.

Phone-kun

And yet another reason I never comment: the (now completely justified) fear that I would manage to screw it up. I added a picture thinking that was how you pick your avatar, accidentally picked the wrong picture, removed it and made an avatar the right way, and am now having a panic attack upon realizing the image got attached anyway and deleting the comment seemingly does nothing but remove my account from it which doesn’t even matter considering the attached image. I’ll just go back to being a silent reader so as to avoid further humiliating myself. Sorry for the trouble.

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

I assure, you, Phone-kun, Disqus confuses the heck out of me, and plenty of people mess up posting through its convoluted system! I assure you I’d rather have you informing me on something I’m interested in using your ample reservoir of knowledge than have a silent reader who fears the labyrinthine Disqus system. I’ll take what you say into consideration concerning the Fate/ series! Kotaku.com seemed to think UBW didn’t require an understanding of the previous series in the franchise, but if UBW does skimp on a lot of character motivation, I suspect that would annoy me quite a bit. Maybe I’ll just watch season 2 of Psychopass instead, even if it has a lower sword quotient than Fate/.

Guest

There’s Unlimited Blade Works: The Movie, which is free (in parts) on YouTube, and is basically an animated cut scene for people who have already played the game proper. Then, there is the anime adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works, which started airing in November and is still ongoing.

Kid Chaos

What’s wrong with Disqus? Seems fine to me.

Sam DunKley

That’s because the most complex thing you’re doing is posting a smiley. Trust me, it can screw you.

…like not loading a whole conversation….

Kid Chaos

And you need to load a whole conversation because…?

Sam DunKley

So I don’t make an idiot of myself with a paragraph-long response to a minor mistake that I was using as an excuse to be mildly witty…when the mistake had already been corrected.

Kid Chaos

Right…I’m going to stick to brief comments and cute smilies. [Pause] Have a nice day!

Sam DunKley

Don’t let having to do a little research turn you off from Fate/! Aside from having ALL OF THE SWORDS (no really, I am not exaggerating, the phrase “Unlimited Blade Works” refers to an actual thing), it has some of the most likable characters, complex motivations and deep ethical questions that I have ever seen in any franchise, and that quality stays consistent across most works wishing said franchise.

…but yeah, you’re going to want to watch the first anime, or cover the first route of the visual novel (definitely available online) before jumping headlong into a complex plot that builds off knowledge obtained therein.

Or don’t, and have the curiosity inspire you to cover the rest of the franchise! I’ve done that, it’s fun.

charles81

She said share words, not sagas!
;P

Astralfury

Oh shit guys she knows his secret password. He got hacked…By the Matrix.

Astralfury

If she suggests they beat someone up while acting out Kabuki while drunk she gets admin rights too.

Mike

After blackmailing Cho, this kind of feels like a step down in difficulty for her.

charles81

Lucky she didn’t suggest “sharing” a drink… I don’t think Ken would share to well.

Ok, so Matrix has setup Ina to focus on her scooby gang a bit more better, set Cho on the path to enlightenment on defeating the Hammer Bros and now its time to sift through Ken’s Ennosuke saga

Kid Chaos

This could go either way; Ken might be happy to talk Matrix’s ear off, especially with a few bottles of sake in him (actually, it’ll probably take more than a few). Or he could revert to type and try to kill her. Now that would be fun to watch.

charles81

I dunno. Ken hasn’t had too much trouble talking in the past. He was almost overjoyed to share his saga with The Ennosuke

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

Although this is normally true, Ken has been pretty moody since he lost to Nataku! I mean moodier than usual.

Sam DunKley

Ken: “Drink, singular? Get out of my face, or up the ante.”

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

That’s what he’d say after he finished the singular drink.

Kid Chaos

“Okawari!” (“Seconds, please!”)

Black_Whirlwind

I’d like to strongly recommend watching Fate/Zero first as well . That’s one of the best animes I’ve ever seen. The fate unlimited bladeworks is decent, it has a few good fight scenes, but it has a very unlikeable main character, and it kinda has a tendency to jump back and forth between slice of life anime and action anime a little too often. Plus all members of the cast are highschoolers.

Now, in contrast, in Fate/Zero all of the characters except one are adults, and there is no real main character. There are a lot of likeable characters and they all get ample characterization. You just need to power through the first 2 episodes, which are extremely boring because they introduce every single character and the plot, and it’s like watching a documentary. The action gets started real quick after this though, with a battle royale between ALL of the seven contestants. With names like Gilgamesh, Alexander the Great and King Arthur thrown into the mix, you can imagine the fighting gets pretty awesome.

The animation and graphics are top notch, comparable to the ones done in FMA: Brotherhood, and there’s plenty of fighting scenes to go around. But by far, the most fun you’ll get is from the character interactions. There’s 7 masters and 7 heroic spirits, and they all have their own motivations and strong personalities, and it’s really fun to watch them interact with each other.

Beware though, it can get a little gritty at times, so you should avoid it if you don’t like shows that tend to have dark moments. To give an example, there’s a guy in there who’s sole purpose in life is to kill little children and he does so with a bunch of tentacled monsters.

Also, I have read none of the visual novels and thoroughly enjoyed watching Fate/Zero.

Not convinced? Then watch this totally realistic depiction of the battle royale and you’ll know what I’m talking about !

You’re a good sell, Whirlwind. If the animation is rad then I will give Zero a try. My biggest problem with the franchise (based soley on the visuals I’ve seen) is that I dislike how the faces look super generic anime. pointy chins and big ol’ eyes, and silly colored crazy anime hair, it doesn’t appeal to me much! The clothing and armor designs look cool.

Sam DunKley

Fate/ is actually fairly subdued about hair colors; anyone more interesting than red is overtly supernatural, or had it deliberately changed, or both. It’s not like Yu-Gi-Oh (in that way-it actually shares a bizarrely large number of concepts which I am just realizing now that’s weird the tones couldn’t be more different) where people can have modern art for hair without the slightest explanation.

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

In all fairness, few anime achieve YuGiOh-level hair.

Black_Whirlwind

As a sidenote, I just finished watching Rage of Bahamut and I enjoyed it pretty much ! When you mentioned it, it reminded me of the tablet game I used to play a few years ago, and I was pleased to find out the anime was actually made after the game !

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

Hey, I had no idea it was based on a card battle game! That explains the big mishmash of Greek, Roman, and Judea Christian dieties existing all in one world. A surprisingly solid adaptation of a game, I have to say! Although I suppose anime tends to be significantly more successful at game to movie/show adaptations than live action media. I remember really liking the Gungrave anime back in the day. And there was the Street Fighter II movie, of course. Disgaea, Danganronpa, and a bunch of other games have had anime series. I tried watching the live action Phoenix Wright movie cause I love those game, but, uuuhhhh, it was so awful. The should’ve just made an anime movie and it would’ve been amazing!

Xinef

Ken: No. I’d prefer kabuki right now.

Flaming Squirrel

So, when can we expect the Ken/Matrix wedding?

… yeah, I would totally ship Kentrix.

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

Oh, you would go Kentrix over YumiKen?

Flaming Squirrel

Yumi never offered him anything to drink. She just hit him with trees. And fists. Now that I think of it, they’re a pretty good couple too…

Kid Chaos

Yep, Kentrix all the way.

Lady Courage

If she’d said “I’m buying drinks” right off the bat, they’d already be linking arms and skipping away and sharing aforementioned words.

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

They’d totes be good drinking buds.

Unhooked

“‘Bring me sake’ was all he ever said to her. That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying ‘Bring me sake’, what he meant was ‘I love booze.’ And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved booze too.”
-The Princess Bushido, 2015

(OK, so not quite a teddy bear hug, but I’ll still call that a pseudo-victory.)

http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

APPROVED.

Unhooked

S-Senpai… they noticed me! *clutches shaking fist victoriously*

Kid Chaos

*Mini-guts*

LisYaj

okay. i KNOW i’m behind if i have to read your blogs and have to comment. Sword Art Online is following the light novel. incase you didn’t know, Sword Art Online is also tied in with Accel World. also, Sword Art Online suppose to take place a few years BEFORE Accel World. And the reasons why, in the 2nd arc, he had to go save the captive princess was that she was being used as a experimental tools, in which the dude, whose company just bought the previous company, wanted to make profit by testing to see if a person’s virtual brain experiment will impact the original. you COULD say that it was all an experiment, but in the end, VR actually happened.

Neska

He did end up cuddling his sword . . .
I’m surprised that waking Ken up like that didn’t result in violence . . . it would have resulted in violence with me, and I’m not generally considered a homicidal maniac! not yet, anyway . . .